SAN FRANCISCO—During his second day of testimony, Travis Kalanick, who co-founded Uber and served as its CEO until mid-2017, submitted to further questioning by Waymo's top lawyer, Charles Verhoeven. Kalanick responded briefly and curtly to Waymo's questions, but he gave much fuller answers when under cross-examination questioning from Uber.

By contrast, Uber attempted to show that Kalanick didn't orchestrate the misappropriation of trade secrets in any way. When given the chance to explain more fully, Kalanick essentially said that in 2015, when he believed that Google was going ahead with its own rideshare service, Uber had to act. That, in turn, led the company to pursue autonomous driving much more quickly, which enraged Google co-founder Larry Page.

At one point during his portion of argument, Verhoeven referenced a text message that former Waymo engineer Anthony Levandowski sent to Kalanick containing a link to a YouTube video: the "greed is good" monologue from the film Wall Street. Verhoeven showed the 90-second film clip to the entire courtroom. (Whether or not Waymo would be allowed to show this clip was subject to some lengthy discussion at the beginning of the Wednesday session, with US District Judge William Alsup ultimately agreeing to it.)

"You clicked on that link, didn’t you sir?" Verhoeven asked.

"I don’t know," Kalanick said.

"That’s a famous speech, isn’t it sir?" Verhoeven pressed.

"It’s a movie, it’s fake," Kalanick replied.

Verhoeven walked Kalanick through various exhibits, ultimately driving to the point that the former CEO was unaware of some key details, including the fact that a due diligence report had not yet been completed.

Another point of question was the fact that Kalanick was in the room during an April 2016 presentation to Uber's board when it approved the acquisition of Levandowski's Ottomotto.

"Isn’t it true, sir, that you didn’t read this agreement before you signed it?" Verhoeven said.

"That’s correct," Kalanick said.

Waymo's attorney tried to highlight the fact that part of the deal to acquire Ottomotto was an indemnification agreement—essentially, a legal shield—that Uber would protect Levandowski and other newly hired employees should they face legal action from Waymo or elsewhere.

"Is it true, sir, that you’ve never heard of an indemnification agreement that uses the words 'pre-signing bad acts?'" Verhoeven said.

"That’s correct," Kalanick answered.

Sibling rivalry

Shortly thereafter, it was Uber's turn. Karen Dunn, one of Uber's top attorneys, began questioning Kalanick.

"To what extent was Anthony Levandowski hired in order to get Google’s trade secrets?” she said.

"To no extent at all."

Why did you hire Anthony Levandowski?" Dunn continued.

"We hired Anthony because we felt that he was incredibly visionary, a very good technologist, and he was also very charming. And we wanted to not just understand how all the technologies could be put together but having a vision as to what that means for cities. How that changes the way cities work and couple that with the driverless system."

"How do you feel about him now?" the attorney persisted.

"Look, this has been a difficult process," Kalanick replied. "He had—this makes it not as great as what we thought it was at the beginning."

Kalanick went on to explain that "self-driving is the car of the future. Uber wants to be part of that future," adding that, with respect to self-driving cars, his company needed to hire the best people.

"You literally have to invent things that don’t exist yet," he said.

The former CEO explained how Uber was initially funded by Google Ventures, Google's venture capital arm. He described it as a "little brother, big brother relationship" and noted that David Drummond, Google's general counsel, served on Uber's board of directors for years.

"Did you consider Google to be a competitor?" Dunn said.

"I did not," Kalanick answered.

Essentially, the arrangement as Kalanick understood it was that Google was nurturing Uber's development. But by May 2014, something changed: he and his colleagues at Uber began hearing "rumors" that Google wanted to directly compete with Uber in ridesharing. Somehow Uber couldn't seem to get a straight answer from Google, and yet, as Kalanick told it, he pressed Google to strike a deal.

"We do the rideshare thing, and you do [the] self-driving thing, and we can put those together," he said. "We were figuring out a way to partner."

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Cyrus Farivar
Cyrus is a Senior Tech Policy Reporter at Ars Technica, and is also a radio producer and author. His latest book, Habeas Data, about the legal cases over the last 50 years that have had an outsized impact on surveillance and privacy law in America, is out now from Melville House. He is based in Oakland, California. Emailcyrus.farivar@arstechnica.com//Twitter@cfarivar